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- [00:02]
Dan LeBatard
You're listening to DraftKings Network. I'm sure this man hears this a lot. Welcome to South Beach Sessions. I'm Dan LeBatard, and this is Weird Al Yankovic. Somebody I have feel. I feel like has been in my life since childhood. You get a lot of that, I imagine, right?
- [00:41]
Weird Al Yankovic
I mean, you. Yes, all the time. Yeah.
- [00:43]
Dan LeBatard
You're also.
- [00:43]
Weird Al Yankovic
Don't shut up about it.
- [00:44]
Dan LeBatard
The biggest selling comedy recording artist in history. That still has to be crazy for you to hear that.
- [00:51]
Weird Al Yankovic
Impressive. Yeah, I'm impressed by that.
- [00:53]
Dan LeBatard
Thank you for being with us. We do a lot of parody songs on our. What used to be a radio show that is now a podcast. And all of those are homage to you because it feels like you're the inventor of these things. Do you feel like you're the inventor of these things? No. You're more famous for it than anybody else.
- [01:10]
Weird Al Yankovic
That's nice of you to say, but obviously I didn't invent the concept of song parody. That's been around since. Well, I mean, our national anthem is basically a song parody. It's an old English drinking song with different words. So the concept of song parody has a rich history, but I guess I helped bring that back in a way when I started out in the early 80s and popularized it. But, no, I grew up on Alan Sherman and all the people that, you know, that song parody was their bread and butter.
- [01:35]
Dan LeBatard
Well, the thing, though, that sort of grabbed you by the claws was radio. Right? Was the idea of radio. And it was. What can you tell us about the original Dr. Demento show and where and how it grabbed you?
- [01:47]
Weird Al Yankovic
Dr. Demento. He's still doing a show, by the way. It's just not on terrestrial radio anymore. He's online behind a paywall, but he's still doing the show every single week. But when I was 11, 12 years old, one of my friends in school turned me on to the Dr. Demento Show. Hey, there's this guy on KMET Los Angeles every Sunday night that plays all these crazy records. And I listened, and I was immediately smitten. I thought, oh, you know, these are my people. This is my music. Like, you know, who is this guy? And I would listen religiously every single Sunday night. And some of the songs he played were a little risque, had some double entendres. And my parents were very protective. And my mother particularly did not like me listening to that kind of music. And when she heard one of those songs on the radio, she forbade me from listening to the Dr. Demento. Show. And it turned out I had to continue listening in bed with a little alarm clock radio next to my ear with the covers pulled up over my head.
- [02:52]
Dan LeBatard
Oh, wow.
- [02:52]
Weird Al Yankovic
So that was my Sunday night.
- [02:54]
Dan LeBatard
Well, you were otherwise a good kid, right? But this. What was she walking in on that was so scandalous that it had to be banned?
- [03:03]
Weird Al Yankovic
I think the one that really got her offended, there was a song called Baby, let me bang your box, but it was about playing the piano, and she thought that was horrible and her young, innocent child should never listen to this kind of music.
- [03:17]
Dan LeBatard
How would you explain your childhood to a stranger?
- [03:21]
Weird Al Yankovic
My childhood. It was a lovely childhood. My parents were very supportive and loving. I was sort of. My dad used to call me me, their miracle child, because they were trying to have a child for a very long time. And I just kind of got in under the wire. So I'm an only child. And probably because of that, they were very protective. I told a story that got used on behind the music and has been repeated a few times about how my high school was directly across the hall, across the street from our house. And during PE Class, my mother used to watch me through binoculars out the window to make sure the other kids weren't playing too rough with me, you know, that kind of thing. And I was not allowed to really go to friends houses to hang out. If they wanted to see me, they had to come to me or come to my house because, I don't know, my mother had some sort of, like, fantasy that I'd be kidnapped or something horrible would happen to me if I was ever out of her sight, so. And again, very loving. But I wish the leash had been just a little longer.
- [04:28]
Dan LeBatard
Well, I was gonna say, when you say very protective, too protective probably. Right. And sheltered.
- [04:36]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah, I would say, in a way. I mean, again, the thing like my mother. We subscribed to TV Guide magazine back at the time. And I remember whenever the magazine would come in, my mother would go through it with a felt marker. And if there were any ads with women in bikinis, she would, like, cross out the naughty bits and just sort of, like, censor them so my innocent eyes wouldn't see more flesh than I was supposed to see. I guess. I don't know, but it just felt a little repressive. Yeah.
- [05:05]
Dan LeBatard
And what sort of things did you realize in adulthood? Oh, wait, that's a part of making me how I am here. Because that the only child of this or the watching with binoculars or all that stuff was a little too much. And now I wasn't paying quite attention. And here it is in adulthood.
- [05:21]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah, you know, I don't know. I've never gone through therapy or psychoanalysis and I don't know how much of my career or my current personality I can attribute to that. And I didn't rebel in any kind of major way. I didn't lash out. I think at the most, I got a little sullen during my teenage years because I was basically confined to my bedroom and I was there with my mad magazines and listening to music on my, you know, eight track player. But yeah, I'm sure it warped me in some ways and I'm sure it contributed to whatever kind of weirdness is happening in my brain to this day.
- [06:01]
Dan LeBatard
Well, I would think, though that perhaps music or performance or these things were, I would think, let your imagination go. There's freedom in it. If it's not rebellion against restrictions. You were looking for some sort of escape. That would be plausible.
- [06:15]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah, I mean, it became very much an inner world kind of thing where I relied on my imagination a lot. And that probably was help in terms of songwriting and creativity and. Yeah, I would think that a lot of my work back then and probably to this day, as a result of just kind of being confined to my head.
- [06:36]
Dan LeBatard
Well, you're also two years behind all the other kids. Right. So you had to be something of an outsider, I would imagine, or didn't. Kids of that age are always just trying to fit in, I suppose, and that could have been difficult.
- [06:45]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah. I don't know how much I want to blame the age difference on it because no matter what my age was, I think as of, you know, verifiable nerd, I would not have really fit in with my classmates. But the fact that I was two years younger certainly didn't help. I started high school when I was 12 years old, graduated when I was 16. I was, you know, too young to drive. I couldn't, you know, my folks wouldn't. Wouldn't let me hang out with other kids for the most part. And yeah, socially, it was not a pleasant experience.
- [07:16]
Dan LeBatard
12 years old, high school, that's tough. Yeah, it's rough and like, that'll leave some marks, I would imagine.
- [07:24]
Weird Al Yankovic
Oh, yeah.
- [07:25]
Dan LeBatard
And at this point, are you already into the accordion? Because 12 years old and the accordion, that's not gonna help either, you know.
- [07:31]
Weird Al Yankovic
It just keeps piling on, doesn't it? Yeah, the accordion started much earlier than that. I think my first music lesson, my first accordion lesson was the day before my seventh birthday. So I started very young. I Took three years of accordion lessons. And after that I stopped, I guess, and just kind of just play it on my own, just, you know. Cause I could play by ear pretty well. I could read music for the most part, but I thought it was fun to just listen to the radio and just try to emul what I was hearing. And my dad liked to sing around the house. He would sing these old World War II army songs and I would play along with him and we'd, you know, we'd tear it up that way. But I just, I obviously never fit in. Like when I got to be 12, 13 years old, I would try to get together with friends and say, hey, you want me to play in your rock band? And they would say no. So I learned pretty early on that if I wanted to stay with that instrument, I would kind of have to go my own way.
- [08:25]
Dan LeBatard
You mentioned that Dr. Demento is still doing it. You are still doing it. You have had made your first album in how long?
- [08:33]
Weird Al Yankovic
Well, my Last album was 2014. Mandatory fun.
- [08:36]
Dan LeBatard
Okay, so that's. And now you're touring bigger and weirder. It's a giant tour, right?
- [08:41]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah, yeah.
- [08:42]
Dan LeBatard
It's how many cities?
- [08:43]
Weird Al Yankovic
It's. I think it's like. I'm not sure about how many. I think it's 75. Either 75 cities or 75 dates. But it's a pretty, you know, mid June to the end of September. And it's a jam packed tour. There's no breaks.
- [08:54]
Dan LeBatard
And what is the process of. Well, I haven't done anything in 10 years and I wanted to do this again. I want to start, I want to do it over.
- [09:00]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah, well, every tour that we do, we try to make a little different or have some kind of hook to it. And it's not like I haven't been recording any music since my last album. I decided I wasn't going to be putting out traditional albums anymore. But I've written songs from movies. I've had my own movie, which I contributed to. I did Polkamania, which was a polka medley, which you put out last summer. So there's a lot of different things that I've done in the meantime. So we want to incorporate. We're going to play some songs that we've never played before. And we're also going to be playing all the greatest hits. So it's sort of the best of both worlds because for the casual fan, we're playing, you know, Eat it and Amish paradise and Yoda and White and Nerdy and, you know, everything that you know, a casual fan would like to hear. And for all the hardcore fans that want to hear the deep cuts, we've got that, too. And we've got some stuff that we were never able to play live before. But because this tour, we're doubling the size of the band, which is one of the reasons it's bigger and weirder. It's a bigger show, a bigger production, and it's probably, you know, I'd like to think it's the best tour we've done yet.
- [10:02]
Dan LeBatard
When you mentioned Pulkamania, it was the first comedy album ever to hit number one.
- [10:09]
Weird Al Yankovic
The mandatory fun.
- [10:11]
Dan LeBatard
Oh. On the billboard 200.
- [10:13]
Weird Al Yankovic
Right. But Pulkamania was the single I released last year. Mandatory Fun was the one.
- [10:17]
Dan LeBatard
Forgive me. Forgive me. When you see things like that happen, like, what are the items that you look at and you're like, you gotta be kidding me. Like you're pinching yourself, yourself, because you're just amazed.
- [10:29]
Weird Al Yankovic
That was something. If I had to pick maybe one moment in my life where my mind was the most blown, it would probably be that because I grew up with Billboard magazine, I did college radio, and we had the charts pinned on the walls, and it was sort of like, you know, our radio bibles. Like, we looked at that. And I dreamed that one day maybe, maybe I would make it onto the Billboard chart. But I never dreamed I'd be number one, because that was historically nearly impossible. Before me, the last person that had a number one comedy album was Alan Sherman, which would have been over 50 years prior. And nobody in history had ever debuted at number one on the album chart with a comedy album. So the fact that I did just threw me for a loop. It was very emotional for me. It's just one of those things that I didn't even dream or try to, you know, try to manifest because I just thought it was out of the realm of possibility.
- [11:27]
Dan LeBatard
When you mentioned MAD magazine in terms of the items that would classify as this kind of thing, being the guest editor, you were the first.
- [11:36]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah, first. And so far only, it looks like.
- [11:38]
Dan LeBatard
So how does that come to be? And what does that mean to you when you link it to what an escape this was in your childhood?
- [11:44]
Weird Al Yankovic
Well, that's definitely another pinch me moment, because I was weaned on Mad magazine. That along with Dr. DiManto, those two things were responsible. Responsible for the lion's share of my sense of humor, I think. I mean, I collected old Mad magazines. And, you know, this is pre Internet, so there wasn't really a way to see or to read Back issues, other than to literally go around town to, like, used book and magazine stores and try to go through the stacks and find old copies of Mad magazine. And thankfully I had very loving and supportive parents who made that happen. My mom would drive me all around greater Los Angeles and we'd try to find these old magazines and. Yeah, and that was just a window into a world that I didn't know existed at the time because I got to see parodies of movies that I was too young to see and TV shows that I couldn't stay up late enough to watch, you know, and the whole sensibility of Mad that the anti authority, like, be skeptical of everything you read, like the advertisers are lying to you. This was information that was important for a young humorist satirist to be aware of. So that was definitely a huge part of my early education.
- [12:59]
Dan LeBatard
Were your parents funny?
- [13:03]
Weird Al Yankovic
I mean, not in a real traditional sense. I think my dad maybe was funnier than my mom. My mom was very quiet and withdrawn, and my dad was certainly more gregarious and loud and more likely to talk to strangers on the street. I suppose he was funny in his own way, but I wouldn't say that he was like a class clown, life of the party kind of guy.
- [13:27]
Dan LeBatard
But where does yours come from? Were you trying to entertain anybody?
- [13:34]
Weird Al Yankovic
I was pretty quiet and withdrawn myself. I didn't have, like, a big personality. But the fact that I could create these silly songs and put myself out there in performance, I mean, I got to extend a part of my personality that didn't come through in everyday life. So I found that kind of appealing. To be able to present a different version of me that way.
- [13:58]
Dan LeBatard
That's pretty cool. It's sort of a character. It's not. But you're not innately a performer. This is something that you want your clever on display, and then you must perform it.
- [14:11]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah. I mean, I'm not one of those people that loves being the center of attention. I actually don't, which seems kind of odd for a person who makes a career out of performing on stage. But I'm not one of these people. I mean, I knew people in high school that, like, were dying to be famous, and that was very important to them. And, like, it's not important to me. I mean, I like it, it's nice, but I just enjoy doing what I do. And the fact that other people enjoy that too, that's great. But I was never, like, somebody that had to make it or had to, you know, had to be the guy.
- [14:43]
Dan LeBatard
For how long was Weird Al an insult? The phrase when you were getting hit with Weird Al?
- [14:50]
Weird Al Yankovic
Well, they probably said it to me in high school as well. But, I mean, I remember distinctly in college, my freshman year, I became known around my dorm as Weird Al, just because I suppose they thought I was weird.
- [15:06]
Dan LeBatard
You're way ahead of the other kids. You're very young.
- [15:09]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah. And they probably had reason to think that, too. I mean, I probably was very odd and stood out from everybody else. But I thought, you know, I'm just gonna take that on as my college radio name. Cause my sophomore year, I got into college radio and everybody had some kind of stupid nickname, and I thought, oh, they're already calling me Weird Al. I'm gonna take it on as an empowering name. Like, all right, I'm Weird Al. There's some reason my weirdness.
- [15:34]
Dan LeBatard
How cool is that, though? So was there a second option on what your DJ name was going to be? Or you just took an insult and turned it into, you know, Giant Come. You showed them, by the way, anybody calling you Weird Al, you really took. You took power over your own.
- [15:51]
Weird Al Yankovic
I'm sorry.
- [15:52]
Dan LeBatard
Now it's pretty cool, though, like, to take the power from them.
- [15:56]
Weird Al Yankovic
Oh, sure, sure. Yeah. And what's really nice is that now I hear from all these kids over the last couple generations, kids that were, you know, ostracized in school, that were considered freaks or weirdos or whatever that didn't fit in, and they looked at me as somebody that owned my weirdness and was okay with it, and they find that very empowering. So it means a lot to me to hear from them and to get letters to that effect.
- [16:22]
Dan LeBatard
What are the greatest compliments you get that make it all seem slightly less silly? I work in sports for a living. There are times I can question the worth of what it is that I'm doing because it can be silly. But then you meet people that you've actually moved or been medicined for, and then you can feel a little better about. Maybe it's an elaborate rationalization, but you could feel a little bit better about whatever it is that you're doing that brings you such happiness.
- [16:48]
Weird Al Yankovic
I think about something that I read about. Tex Avery, the famous Warner Brothers cartoonist from the 40s who did droopy Dog and a lot of Tom and Jerry and a lot of amazing, amazing animation. And apparently on his deathbed, he was just grumbling that he'd wasted his entire life doing stupid cartoons. And I just thought that was so insane. I mean, I don't know, if he ever read fan mail or anything like that. But I mean, humor brings so much to people's lives. I mean, even if what you're doing is kind of ridiculous and, you know, it affects people. And I've read so many letters from people. You know, I've read probably a couple dozen letters from people saying they were on the brink of suicide and they started listening to my albums and it kind of snapped them out of it and it got them, you know, feeling better. And, you know, that's no small thing to make people feel feel better. So, you know, even, even sometimes when I think that what I do in life has not got much importance, I just think that it really does, you know, seem to affect people.
- [17:48]
Unknown
Well, you guys have listened to oral history and you know that the origins of this show were once just a dream for. For Dan and for Stugats. And that dream turned into the show and now the business of Metalark Media and the show that you're listening to today. But starting your own business is a dream that lots of us share. Too many of us let it remain just a dream. So don't hold yourself back thinking, what if I don't have the skills? What if I can't do it alone? Turn those what ifs into why nots? With Shopify by your side, Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide, including 10% of all U.S. e commerce. Whether you're Mattel or you're just getting started, Shopify's got your back. Not a web designer, no problem at all. Shopify has beautiful ready to go templates. You help with the details. Their AI tools can enhance product images, write descriptions, and even generate discount codes. Worried about finding customers, Shopify makes marketing easy with email and social media tools. And if I ever get stuck, Shopify's award winning 247 support is always there. Turn those dreams into and give them the best shot at success with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today. At shopify.com, go to shopify.com, shopify.com/buttard.
- [19:00]
Billy, would you rather have a game night or would you rather go to a party? Now, before you answer that question, there's gonna be Miller Light of both. Wow, there's gonna be Miller Light of both of them. Because I see you were playing Mario Kart. You're a Mario guy. I know you like playing video games with your switch. Like I feel like you'd be more of the game night kind of guy.
- [19:17]
You know, this is like the classic Debate. Great tastes are less filling.
- [19:21]
Right.
- [19:22]
Why choose one or the other when you can have both?
- [19:23]
When you can have both. Exactly right. And on top of that, we're celebrating 50 years of great taste and less filling.
- [19:30]
All right, we got to do both.
- [19:31]
50 years of Miller light since 1975. The original light beer. And now's the perfect time to celebrate legendary stories with family, friends, and a great tasting light beer. Billy, you know what time it is? Let's check my watch. Funny enough. It's Miller Time, baby.
- [19:45]
Weird Al Yankovic
I thought so.
- [19:46]
Unknown
It's Miller Time Taste. You can depend on a great beer for people who love beer. Simple ingredients like malted barley for rich balanced toffee. No flavors. And the iconic golden color. 96 calories. Just 3.2 grams of carbs for 12 ounces. How do they do that?
- [20:01]
Science.
- [20:02]
It's amazing, though. The original light beer since 1975 and still iconic 50 years later. Miller Lite great taste. 96 calories. Go to millerlight.com beach to find delivery options near you, or you can pick up Miller Lite pretty much anywhere that sells beer. It's Miller time, baby. Celebrate responsibly. Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces.
- [20:25]
Dan LeBatard
When did you realize it could actually be a career? When did it stop being something that was just fun or that you were interested in and you were like, no, wait a minute. I can. I can do this and have it be my livelihood.
- [20:37]
Weird Al Yankovic
I think it was about two weeks ago when. No, I guess when I signed my record deal. Because I graduated from college with a degree in architecture, which I've never really used. And I thought, well, I'm very young. I've got some options before me. At that time, I had some minor hits on the Dr. DiManto Show. Cause I'd sent him tapes of my bologna and another one Rides the Bus. And they'd gone viral and meant big hits on a show. And I thought, well, let's see if I can get a record deal. So for a couple years while I was working at a day job for minimum wage, I would go around knocking on doors and sending in tapes and trying to solicit a deal. And finally, a couple years, I think 1982 is when I signed my record contract with Scotty Brothers Records. And it wasn't a great deal because record companies aren't going to offer some kid with an accordion a lot of money. It was basically this draconian contract where they had me for 10 albums. I'm sure they didn't in their wildest imagination think they're going to do ten albums with me. It's one of those things you put into a contract on the extremely off chance that this kid makes it. We've got you for this amount of time. So, you know, at that point, I'll tell you the exact moment when it occurred to me, because slightly after I signed my record deal and I put out my first single, I mean, they didn't give me any money up front. It was just sort of like, you know, here's your contract. So I was still working for minimum wage, you know, at a mailroom for a radio syndication company. And I remember I went to the mail post office box one day and picked up the mail, and the Billboard magazine was sticking out of the mailbag. And I opened it up and I'm there on the Hot 100 chart. And I thought, oh, I should probably give notice. You probably get serious about this Weird Al thing.
- [22:33]
Dan LeBatard
Can you take me through the details of going door to door? Like, what did the failures look like? What did the disappointments look like? There couldn't have been too many of them, right? Cause you arrived pretty early.
- [22:43]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah, I mean, I don't think a lot of it was literally going door to door. I might have done that when I was much younger and naive. But it was a lot of sending cassette tapes in the mail to various record companies and getting blank letters of rejection. And then my manager, Jay levy, he was Dr. Demento's manager back in the early 80s, and he saw me perform with Dr. Demento on stage and thought this kid might have some potential. So he decided to work with me and he kind of got my name around town. And we got again turned down by virtually everybody. But Scotty Brothers at the time wanted to give it a shot because I think the president of the record company used to play the accordion when he was a kid. And so he had a soft spot for accordion. So he said, I'll give the yank of it kid a shot.
- [23:36]
Dan LeBatard
Did they keep you locked in for the 10 albums?
- [23:39]
Weird Al Yankovic
Well, it wound up being 14 albums, actually, because at some point in the middle of the contract, I was becoming so popular that we were able to renegotiate the contract for better terms. But part of the renegotiation was, well, okay, we'll give you better terms, but you've got to give us two more albums. And then we renegotiated again a little later for even better terms, but then two more albums. So it wound up being a 14 album deal. Which took me just 32 years to fulfill, but we fulfilled it. So Mandatory Fun, which came out 10 years ago, was. Or I guess 11 years ago. That was my last album and ostensibly will be my last album. But yeah, it's just. And they wanted to re sign me, obviously. I mean, it wasn't at that point. Scotty Brothers had sold my contract to another company, but. And they wanted to re sign me. But I just like the idea of not being beholden to anybody, not owing anybody anything. When I was under contract, I always felt like three more albums to go, you know, I just, you know, my house is paid off. I don't, you know, I don't pay. Everything that I have, I own. I just don't like the idea of somebody waiting for me to do something.
- [24:51]
Dan LeBatard
Yeah, that's a responsibility. It's sort of the opposite of freedom. But what have the 10 years between albums been like as someone who's always been a creator? Right. How much uncertainty has there been in there? How much searching? Or is it just. Is it peaceful because you've arrived at the things that you wanted?
- [25:11]
Weird Al Yankovic
It's pretty peaceful. I mean, I'm at a point in my life where I don't have as much of a fire in my belly as I had in my 20s. I'm okay not working and just waiting till I get inspired to do something. I certainly haven't. I haven't retired. I still am making music. I'm being more involved in TV shows and movies. I got to put up my we're the Al Yankee victory a couple years ago. So I've still been very busy. It's just that it's kind of on my own terms. I don't feel like I need to continue creating like I did in the 80s. Like, in the 80s, I was like, I can't believe I got a record deal. And I felt like I had to put out an album every single year because otherwise it would all go away. Like, you gotta grab that brass ring every time it comes around. And it took me a while before I realized that, you know, I've had some hit albums, some albums that didn't do so well, but I was doing well enough that people still wanted to hear from me and I had an actual career. And once I realized I could calm down a little bit, I was just kind of putting out things whenever I felt like it. And my fan base basically stayed with me. So that's a nice place to be.
- [26:26]
Dan LeBatard
But when did you realize that you can calm down a little bit because that's not something I usually find with successful people that they tend to feel like they're being chased.
- [26:35]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah, it was a gradual process. I think it maybe started sometime in the mid-90s, which probably can see because the span between albums got longer and longer. And in a big way, since my last album, I kind of feel like I'll continue to be creative, but I'm just not going to have to come up with 12 songs and put them all out at once. I can just do songs whenever they occur to me.
- [27:07]
Dan LeBatard
Architecture.
- [27:09]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah, that came about when I was 12 years old. I had a meeting with my high school guidance counselor and I told him, he said, what do you want to do for a living? And I said, well, you know, I'd really like to be a contributor to Mad magazine. I'd like to write and illustrate for Mad magazine. And he kind of looked at me and said, yeah, no, that's not really a job for a grown up. You want to have a real job, you know, because I think. I don't know what it's like now, but certainly back in the 70s, I don't think anybody would encourage you to do go into show business or go into the arts.
- [27:51]
Dan LeBatard
Certainly not parody songs.
- [27:53]
Weird Al Yankovic
But I mean, you know, it just seemed like an unreasonable thing for a kid to want to be when he grew up. And he said, well, look, you like design, you're good in math, you love this drafting class you just had, you should be an architect. And I kind of said, well, if you think so, okay. So it seemed like it was like the adult choice. It was something that it made sense for me to do, to grow up and be an architect as somebody who.
- [28:21]
Dan LeBatard
Wanted to be a creative person. I remember on the University of Miami campus, I'd always be walking past these very bright etching places where people were working at one o' clock in the morning as architects. And it just seemed like it had a rigidity to it that wasn't quite. I'm not saying it's not creative because it is. But when you're applying math and stuff, it's not exactly the creativity that you ended up gravitating toward.
- [28:44]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah, and it's not an easy major. I went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and they have a great architecture school. But I mean, they called it. The students called it archa torture because, I mean, they worked as hard. You know, we'd be up in those labs literally all night long before a big project was due. We probably didn't sleep. It was a lot of work and I'm no stranger to hard work, but to be that involved in something that I didn't really have a passion for, it was tough on me. Because other people in my class, they lived and breathed it, and they loved the form following the function, and it was just something that meant a lot to them, and it didn't mean a lot to me. I mean, I. I had more fun, like, every Saturday night doing the Weird Al show on my campus radio show. I looked forward to that. That's what I lived for. And the rest of the week in the architecture lab, that was just like. Just get me to Saturday night.
- [29:36]
Dan LeBatard
Where'd the hard work come from? Where'd the work ethic come from?
- [29:40]
Weird Al Yankovic
I don't know. I was always good in school. I worked really hard at my studies. That meant a lot to me. I was the valedictorian in my high school. Straight A's all the way through. And I think my parents appreciated that. But it was a personal point of pride. I just, you know, I knew I was good at it and I kind of wanted to be the best at it. So I did whatever I could to make that happen.
- [30:03]
Dan LeBatard
Lot of discipline in the house, or.
- [30:06]
Weird Al Yankovic
I mean, I was never spanked. I was never. There's no corporal punishment.
- [30:11]
Dan LeBatard
Wow. I didn't mean to go there. I'm just saying, like. I'm saying, this is a form of personal pride. But you're achieving faster than most. You're. Obviously, you're sheltered. Your mother's keeping a close eye on you, so they wanna make sure everything's okay, that something is forming there that's making you want. Straight A's aren't coming easily. Right. You have to work for it.
- [30:34]
Weird Al Yankovic
I certainly have to work for it. I don't know. I mean, I think it's a universal desire to wanna please your parents and make them proud of you. And I'm sure that was a big part of it. And also, it was me trying to be the best version of me that I could and express that through being a good student.
- [30:52]
Dan LeBatard
You personally go to the artists who you're parodying and you ask all of their permission, correct?
- [30:59]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah. I mean, if they wrote the song, if they didn't write the song. We don't always approach the artist, but that's usually the case.
- [31:05]
Dan LeBatard
Do you have any good stories there? Either of you being like, how is this even happening? Or somebody running you out of a room because they don't appreciate what it is that you do?
- [31:17]
Weird Al Yankovic
Well, when I first started out, I mean, literally, I was just you know, a kid sending songs to Dr. Lamento as a teenager, you know, I didn't think, oh, I should call up Queen and see what they think of prosperity. And in fact, that got us into a little bit of trouble because, you know, after another one rides the bus became a big hit on the Dr. Demo show, we got a call from Queen's lawyer saying, you know, you probably should have asked us about this or run this by us. And thankfully they had a good enough sense of humor that they didn't sue me or anything like that. They did just, you know, finished up the paperwork and said, okay, now it's legal. So it was a little shaky in the beginning because I just didn't know how to do it. And then by the time I was doing my second album, I wanted to do Eat it. But I thought, you know, Michael Jackson's the biggest artist in the universe and there's no way he's gonna, you know, agree to co writing a song with this, you know, idiot kid. But word got to him and he approved it. And so now there's a contract with my signature next to his saying that we are the co writers of Edit.
- [32:19]
Dan LeBatard
That's the most surprising of the approvals that you've gotten.
- [32:21]
Weird Al Yankovic
Well, it was, yeah. I mean, especially because that was early on and that really turned the key because after Michael Jackson gave his permission then it was a lot easier to get permission from everybody else. It was ammunition, you know, it was like, well, Michael Jackson was okay with it. What's your problem?
- [32:36]
Dan LeBatard
What are the things that people don't know about? What, what were the difficulties in achieving what you've achieved?
- [32:46]
Weird Al Yankovic
What they don't know. People just think. A lot of people have the misconception that just because it's funny music that it's effortless, that, oh, my six year old kid changes the words to songs and well, I don't disbelieve you, but I can't imagine it's very good. And to do it well requires a lot of effort. That's probably what a lot of people don't realize. If you go through my notebooks, well, another one rides a bus. I probably wrote that in less than half an hour because I just thought, oh, here's a silly song I'm going to put on the Dr. Di Mano Show. But after I started realizing that people actually cared about what I did about my art and that I would have to maybe play some of these songs on stage for decades to come, I started spending a lot more time on it. So if you look at some of my notebooks. For every line in a song, I've got a dozen variations, like, either it's a different joke or it's a slightly different way to phrase a line, or the accents on a different syllable, something like that. But it's something that I really take pains to perfect. Even though it seems like it's just this ridiculous song, there's a lot of effort that goes into it. Even the most ridiculous song has probably spent a week or two just. Just fine tuning it.
- [34:08]
Dan LeBatard
What's your relationship with writing? Do you enjoy doing it or having done it more?
- [34:14]
Weird Al Yankovic
Having done it, yeah. I mean, I wouldn't say that there's no pleasure in writing. Certainly. There's especially moments where I come up with an idea or a rhyme that works really well and I have a small moment of pride. But the writing process is, in general, not that fun. My wife will describe when I'm in a writing process and I just wander through the house like a zombie with the thousand yard stare, just because I'm so in my own head trying to think of things. But I feel a tremendous amount of accomplishment having written something. So that's definitely the best part. The idea of, oh, I have a body of work now, and I did that. A former version of me is responsible for that.
- [34:55]
Dan LeBatard
You have a great ear for what's good if it meets your standard. Is it likely to meet the standard of others?
- [35:03]
Weird Al Yankovic
I think so. I'm a pretty good editor of my own ideas. There are some songwriters that will write 10 songs before they have breakfast in the morning. They'll write 100 songs and record 40 of them, and 12 will wind up on the album. I've never done that. I maybe come up with 100 ideas, but I'm pretty good at looking at those ideas and saying, well, I think this would merit a 3 1/2 minute pop song. I see what the hook is. I see where the jokes would be. I think there's enough here that I can make that into a good song. So I'll come up a with with 12 ideas. I will write those 12 songs and I'll record those 12 songs and I'm done. There's no, like, hidden Weird Al songs in the vault that we just had left over. Like, everything I've ever done is out there.
- [35:51]
Dan LeBatard
Another one rides the bus. Is that the one that's come to you quickest? Like, what is the easiest success story of something that just flowed from you? It was done, it arrived. And you're like, oh, what a blessing. I Don't have to work that hard at this one.
- [36:04]
Weird Al Yankovic
Pretty much. Well, everything I did in the very beginning, certainly another one rides the bus. And probably My Bologna as well. I mean, that was just, you know, a dumb song about lunch meat, basically, that I came up with because My Sharona happened to be the song of the summer. So I recorded that in the bathroom across the hall from my campus radio station. And I can't imagine I spent a lot of time on that. And it probably shows. I like those songs because they're historical. They're a part of my story. But I wouldn't hold them up and say, these are great pieces of art or something that I really struggled with. They were just like some goofy songs that I wrote when I was very young.
- [36:39]
Dan LeBatard
But did you say that. You said that My Sharona was the one that broke for you, right? That's the one that Dr. Demento played first.
- [36:45]
Weird Al Yankovic
Mike Bologna was the first.
- [36:47]
Dan LeBatard
Forgive Me.
- [36:48]
Weird Al Yankovic
It was the first one that was a big hit on the Demento show. It wasn't the first thing of mine he played. But in the early days, I would send him tapes in the mail and he'd play them on the radio. And I would call up the request line and try to disguise my voice and request my own songs and have people from my high school do the same. But My Bologna was the first time when it was a big hit without any input from me. All of a sudden, people from all over the world were requesting my bologn. And I thought, wow, this is unusual. Like, other people like my stuff.
- [37:19]
Dan LeBatard
You were going everywhere with an accordion when you were young, or was this something that you were just doing at seven years old? Seven, Yeah.
- [37:28]
Weird Al Yankovic
I started when I was about seven. Yeah.
- [37:29]
Dan LeBatard
And are you going places with it, making childhood even more awkward because you're someone who's taking something with you that is a musical pacifier.
- [37:41]
Weird Al Yankovic
Well, I didn't take it to parties or anything like that. Maybe I would play it in the school talent show, but it wasn't something. I mean, I joke about that being the life of the party, but I didn't really force it on people. Sometimes if people came over and they wanted to hear me play, I would play for them. But it wasn't something that I forced on people too often.
- [38:01]
Dan LeBatard
Was there something else that was this kind of obsession for you? Something that in childhood grabs you and you just realize, because it just sounds from the way that you're talking about it, like, what a wonderful imagination. Escape hat from whatever was sheltered or whatever unhappiness there was. And I'd like to go out and be a child. I don't need my mom watching me all the time, nor do I necessarily understand why my mom is watching me all the time.
- [38:28]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah, I took my comfort in comedy and music. I mean, you know, I was inspired by Monty Python and sctv and musically all the songs I was hearing on the Dr. Demento show and on rock radio and those two things were always my passions. And I just always feel so blessed because somehow I was able to turn those two passions and make a living out of it. So my dad used to say that the only real sign of success is being able to make a living doing the thing you love. So if I didn't have a 40 year career, I still feel like a success because I've just been able to make a living doing specifically the things I love. So I always am so thankful for that.
- [39:14]
Dan LeBatard
How would it have been different if you'd been Al the architect?
- [39:17]
Weird Al Yankovic
Extremely different. And that came close to happening. You know, there was a couple years there after college where I kind of didn't know how my life was going to go. And I guess in retrospect it was a pretty scary time because, you know, my whole future was ahead of me. But yeah, there's definitely an alternate route where I would have been just like Al the architect and probably been somewhat miserable my whole life. I mean, the guy that is my stage manager on tour and has been for many years, he's an architect and he still works. Every now and then he'll go on the road with me for several months, then go back to his firm. It just reminds me like, okay, here's a guy that is doing quite well and even he needs to get out on the road.
- [40:05]
Dan LeBatard
I would think that. Advice from your father. A lot of people spend a lot of time daily, weekly, monthly and yearly doing jobs, trudging to jobs they do not like. So I think on the pie chart, you have a reputation of being an exceedingly nice and decent man. You give off a happy energy, I would think, at least in part because you have gotten for 40 years to feel like a little bit like you're stealing money.
- [40:32]
Weird Al Yankovic
Well, you know, I.
- [40:33]
Dan LeBatard
And I'm not saying you don't earn it, I'm not saying you don't earn it, but. No, but being able to love, be passionate about something that you're doing all the time, like it really does change the math on happiness if you're carrying yourself with gratitude all the time.
- [40:46]
Weird Al Yankovic
You know, I'm generally a very happy person. I really can't complain. I can't complain. You know, we live in a world that's full of a lot of not so nice things. But you know, I try not be overwhelmed by that. And I try not to focus hyper or be hypersensitive about the things that I personally can't fix. I try to do my, you know, try to make the world a better place in my own small way. And I keep my sanity by just trying to focus on the one the small pieces of joy that I can find in life.
- [41:19]
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- [42:18]
Dan LeBatard
Is there something about doing this tour at this age that you think will carry with it more appreciation than all of the other things that you have done?
- [42:30]
Weird Al Yankovic
You know, every time I do a tour, it kind of exposes my act to a new generation. When you look out into the audience, it's really multi generational because it's the people that have been been there since the 80s and now they're bringing their kids and sometimes their grandkids. So it's just the fact that I've shown tenacity. I'm still doing it and I'm bringing something different every time I go out, which I guess that's appealing to people that it's nice to be able to just put myself in front of people. I hear all the time about parents that have kids that came up to them and said, you know, I just heard about this weird Al guy You ever hear of him? And they're like, yeah, we've heard of him. You want to listen to some records?
- [43:15]
Dan LeBatard
It's. I mean, 40 years, like you couldn't have imagined, right? How is it that you're looking back now in adulthood and saying, well, I suppose I was scared. But you don't remember it as two years of scared at the time because you didn't know what path you were gonna take.
- [43:29]
Weird Al Yankovic
You know, I was just young and naive, and I probably didn't even know at that time that I should be scared. You know, only with the, you know, decades of time to have retrospection do I look back and say, wow, I should have been scared, because that was a pretty scary moment in my life.
- [43:48]
Dan LeBatard
But at the time, you're just too young to know any better.
- [43:51]
Weird Al Yankovic
Kind of, yeah. Because I didn't know really what my future held for me. And I was just looking at my options. I mean, I remember I graduated from college with a degree, but I didn't want to be an architect. I wanted to get as far away from that as I could. And I applied for anywhere that would take me. I think I applied to the phone company. I think I applied for janitorial work, and they wouldn't take me. Because you got a college degree. What do you want to do this for? And I had to explain that I needed to eat food on occasion. And I got very lucky because the job that I got out of college was working for a radio syndication company called Westwood One, and they syndicated the Dr. Demento Show. So not only did I get to hang out with the doctor, with Dr. Demento, when he did his weekly broadcast, but all these rock stars were coming into the studio to be interviewed. So I got to meet Frank Zappa. You know, I got him to autograph my copy of Freakout. I got to meet all these cool people. And even though I was working in the mailroom, literally for like, $5 an hour at the time, which I guess was minimum wage, it was a pretty cool job. So, again, I can't really complain.
- [44:59]
Dan LeBatard
You didn't know what you wanted to do, but I guess it was a pretty strong feeling that you didn't want to be an architect, that you had largely wasted a college education because it was what you were supposed to do.
- [45:12]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah, I wouldn't say it was a wasted college education, but, yeah, it made me learn that wasn't my passion. I had to remember that my passion was music, and my passion was comedy. And I didn't know that I could make A living doing that. But I thought, hey, I'm young. I got a try.
- [45:29]
Dan LeBatard
Maybe the entirety wasn't a waste, Al. But if you're applying for a janitor's job with an architect's degree, you have tossed aside the want to be an architect.
- [45:40]
Weird Al Yankovic
Well, I think I was my third year into college when I really had the epiphany, like, okay, I am definitely not gonna do this the rest of my life. But I didn't want to drop out because to me, that was failure. I just wanted to. I'm gonna stick it out. I'm gonna spend another year and a half and get my degree, and it'll look good on the wall or whatever. And, you know, I didn't have a plan B. Cause I couldn't tell my parents, yes, I'm gonna be a rock star now.
- [46:05]
Dan LeBatard
Yeah, that one doesn't really work that way. When you look at the moment, you mentioned being emotional on certain occasions, the landmarks of your life that are achievement, that are filled with the sort of snapshots that are your mental scrapbook. Like, where are you? Where are you performing? What are the notes being hit in both performance or just achievement because a phone call has arrived that gives you security. Like, what are the moving moments that are the landmarks?
- [46:37]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah. Hearing from people that are my heroes, that means a lot to me. Monty Python was such a seminal influence to me growing up. And Eric Idle came to one of my shows and he loved it. And we actually become fairly close friends at this point, which kind of blows my mind, because he's a hero and a friend. And it's just amazing to me the people that inspired me now that they like what I do. And that just means a whole lot to me.
- [47:13]
Dan LeBatard
Are there crowds or performances that you think of? Are there places? And there may not be. I'm not sure. I don't know if there are times that. There are times that my life sort of slows down. And some things that I wanted become present. And I can't, you know, I have to stop and acknowledge them because, you know, it'll catch in my throat.
- [47:35]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah, I've definitely done some venues where it was pretty daunting at the time. I remember. You know, sometimes I don't know if there are anxiety attacks, but my wife remembers when she came to see me backstage at one of my shows and I was curled up in a fetal position on the floor. Cause I was so nervous. But I've played the Hollywood Bowl a few times. I played Carnegie hall fairly recently. You know, Red Rocks is always A huge thrill to play. And on this upcoming tour, we're playing Madison Square Garden, which blows my mind. And we're also playing the Los Angeles Forum, which means a lot to me because it's my local gig, and it's the first place I ever saw a rock show. And I remember in the mid-70s, I went to see Elton John there, and it was a big ordeal for me to go to a rock show because, again, my parents were very protective, and they just were so worried about me going to a rock show. So I almost had to run away from home to be able to go to that show. But I just remember watching Elton John from the nosebleed seats with my binoculars and just having the best time. And it's such a nice bookend to, like, 40, 50 years later be actually on stage playing the form curled in the fetal position.
- [48:48]
Dan LeBatard
Is that literal?
- [48:50]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah, probably.
- [48:52]
Dan LeBatard
Why would you be nervous like that? I would. And forgive my ignorance here, but I would just think that at some point you wouldn't be quite that nervous that you would have. And I may have this wrong, because performers do speak to. You have to respect what you're doing. You can embarrass yourself very quickly. So that can be fuel. You can get used to it. It can become your friend. I'm just surprised we went to fetal position. You could be nervous without falling apart.
- [49:17]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah, no, I mean, I wasn't completely falling apart, but I was definitely, definitely nervous, you know, and it's just for certain shows, on certain occasions, like, I get nervous at the beginning of tours because we don't have it locked in yet. The muscle memory hasn't kicked in yet. And, you know you're gonna make mistakes, and you're just, like, not enjoying the thought of you forgetting words or hitting the wrong cue. So I get much less nervous after a week or two into the tour, and everybody's, you know, going in all cylinders. And there are a few big shows where the pressure's on. I get very nervous. Any kind of live television, I get very nervous. And I try not to, but it's just such a part of my personality to feel that way. And I really admire performers that don't have that. I like to tell the story about Donny Osmond. I went to see him in Las Vegas a couple years ago at his residency, and I was hanging with him backstage stage, and we're just chatting, chatting, chatting. And I realized, you go on stage in, like, five minutes. Don't you have to prepare? Don't you have to get ready? Don't you have to warm up. And he looked at me and said, al, I've been warming up for 60 years. Like, oh, man, you are the man. And I wish I could be that. I wish I could be so confident in myself that I just was never nervous about anything. But that's not the way I'm built.
- [50:38]
Dan LeBatard
What other anxieties, like, are you an anxious person? Are you somebody? Or is this performance performance based?
- [50:45]
Weird Al Yankovic
It's more performance based because otherwise I'm pretty mellow. And I don't live my life in a state of anxiety. I'm sure we all have a certain amount of it, but I think my level's pretty low.
- [50:56]
Dan LeBatard
This is a reasonable thing to be anxious about. So I'm not assigning a weirdness to it. I would just think that after 40 years, you've got. It might not be your friend, but you're familiar enough with it that your wife is unsurprised when you're in the fetal position.
- [51:15]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah. And it's just such a different life to be on the road as opposed to at home. Because sometimes I'll take a quick break from being on the road and be at home and it's back to life as normal. And I'll be taking out the trash and thinking, like, oh, tomorrow night I'm gonna be on stage in front of 20,000 people. You know, it just feels. Feels like such a different world. And that's kind of what it is. Like you have, you know, it's home world and tour world.
- [51:44]
Dan LeBatard
Are you putting on a bit of a costume? Like, is. When you're on stage, it's not. It's your work, but it's not actually you. Once you get off of stage, you're a different person.
- [51:56]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah. In a literal sense, I put on about a dozen costumes because it's a very good costume. Heavy show. But, you know, I am myself on stage. It's not like Weird Al is a character per se, but certainly the version of me on stage is a lot louder and more entertaining than me, you know, walking down the street.
- [52:17]
Dan LeBatard
Well, do people expect it from. I don't know what the burden of expectation with you is in public when someone is meeting you. If it has to be, you know, jazz hands. If there's. If someone's expecting something from you other than, oh, oh, he's kind and nice. That they're expecting. Wacky.
- [52:33]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah. I probably fed into that expectation more in the 80s. Cause I thought, I've got to live up to the name, you know. And I probably put on a Bit more of a show or was a little bit more smart alecky than I normally am. But I've kind of calmed down. And now I think people realize that I'm not bouncing off the walls all the time. I'm just kind of like a regular guy.
- [52:55]
Dan LeBatard
I don't know how much you know about sports, but I have a friend, Ricky Williams, who is considered and has been considered very weird since he came into the public eye. And he's taken great pride in both and freedom in both embracing the weird and in giving others permission to embrace the weird. Did you have any sort of breakthroughs here as you were growing up where you were like, no, I can be most myself. And here are the rewards that prove it.
- [53:25]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah, I mean, as a teenager, once I realized that I was a social outcast, it was sort of like I had nothing to lose. Like, I didn't care. Like, oh, I'm gonna look silly doing this. Like, oh, people think I'm an idiot anyway. Like, was it gonna hurt? So it sort of gave me. Gave me freedom. It gave me a license to let my freak flag fly a bit. So I didn't have any qualms about being weird or caring really what people thought of me. Because, you know, it didn't matter at that point. And college was a bit of a restart because people in college didn't know who I was. And I thought, oh, I can maybe redefine myself. In fact, I think that's when I started going by Al, because all through high school, I was Alfred Yankovic, my full name. And I thought, oh, Alfred sounds like, you know, was like Alfred E. Newman sounds like the Butler on Batman. It sounded like Poindexter sounded geeky. I thought, Al. Al sounds cool. That's a good, masculine, firm name. I'll be Al.
- [54:22]
Dan LeBatard
It's better than Alfred.
- [54:23]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah. And then within a year, I was a Weird Al.
- [54:28]
Dan LeBatard
When you think about playing Madison Square Garden, what does that do?
- [54:34]
Weird Al Yankovic
Well, when my manager first told me that over the phone, I thought he was joking. Cause in the early 80s, we had tour T shirts with fake bogus dates on the back and like, oh, I'll be doing a residency at Madison Square Garden. It was one of those things we joked about. And now it's actually happening for. So it's a bit mind blowing. Hopefully I won't be in the fetal position on the floor. But I did have a small bit of anxiety the second he told me, oh, that's a big show.
- [55:01]
Dan LeBatard
I gotta go do this now. If they're selling tickets, I'm gonna actually have to go do it.
- [55:06]
Weird Al Yankovic
And last time I was in New York, I went to Madison Square Garden and I walked around the perimeter of it and there's all these posters of Elton John and Eddie Vedder and all these quotes from people. Bruce Springsteen saying, you're nothing until you play at Madison Square Garden. I'm like, oh, make me more nervous. Okay.
- [55:22]
Dan LeBatard
What would pass as the second place venue to that one? I mean, you mentioned a few of them, but just another place like that where you're like, this can't be.
- [55:32]
Weird Al Yankovic
Probably the Forum, the same tour in.
- [55:34]
Dan LeBatard
La, so those are nearby. Right. Like, you're thinking of Lakers games and you're thinking, and what a majestic tribute, though. What a great thing to be able to celebrate 40 years into this, to be able to still do it. I was reading something, I think there's some musical class where you exist over four decades with only Madonna and Michael Jackson.
- [55:57]
Weird Al Yankovic
Right.
- [55:57]
Dan LeBatard
Like, it's three names and you're one of them because of the enduring legacy of what it is that you do and the happiness.
- [56:05]
Weird Al Yankovic
Right. I think we're the only three acts to have our own top 40 singles in the last four decades.
- [56:12]
Dan LeBatard
Yeah. So that's crazy. Like, you can't. I mean, when we sit in the middle of that, you think, what of that? That's total lunacy.
- [56:20]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah.
- [56:20]
Dan LeBatard
And it's not to say that you're not incredibly talented, but we're talking about eternal artists and eternal artists who perpetually reinvented themselves.
- [56:29]
Weird Al Yankovic
It is pretty crazy, I have to admit. I mean, part of me feels like this whole thing is like everybody's playing a joke. I mean, like, yeah, it's sort of like, you know, who is the Make a Wish kid? The Bat Kid. Like, well, we'll just pretend that he's Superman, you know, and we'll just let Al think he's a rock star, you know?
- [56:49]
Dan LeBatard
I mean, five. So you've won five Grammys, right? Yes. And 17 nominations.
- [56:55]
Weird Al Yankovic
That sounds right.
- [56:56]
Dan LeBatard
Not that we're counting. That landed how? The first one of those, how did that land?
- [57:03]
Weird Al Yankovic
It was crazy. I mean, I was up against, Gosh, I think I was up against Richard Pryor and Rodney Dangerfield and all these icons, and somehow I won. And every single grand is as wonderful of an experience. It never gets old. I never get jaded from those kind of honors because it's my peers showing their appreciation for what I do. So that's still mind blowing to me.
- [57:31]
Dan LeBatard
You have mentioned a couple of times now, sort of some version of parents holding Onto you tight. What are the examples that are coming to mind when you're thinking of. Here is where my childhood was really unusual. Perhaps I didn't know it was unusual, but looking back on it, this was not normal.
- [57:55]
Weird Al Yankovic
Well, there was. Because I was encouraged to stay at home pretty much all the time. My dad would try to think of ways that I could be amused. So at one point we had a. It was a small house in Linwood, California, and they had a basement, which I don't know, was like a holdover from the Cold War. I don't know why we had a basement, but we did. And at one point my dad knocked down the walls in the basement and he let me make tunnels under the house. So they called it the mole hole. And we'd just bring buckets and buckets of dirt out and I would make my own, like little, you know, like ant farm, ish kind of trails underneath the house. He said as long as you don't dig underneath the foundation, have fun.
- [58:38]
Dan LeBatard
Right?
- [58:40]
Weird Al Yankovic
It was such an odd thing, but my friends would come over and we'd like spend like the day under the house digging tunnels. So that was something.
- [58:47]
Dan LeBatard
Seems more dangerous than being outside the house. I gotta be honest. I don't know what they were trying to protect you from, but being under the house seems dangerous.
- [58:55]
Weird Al Yankovic
I never collapsed the house, but they knew where I was at least.
- [58:59]
Dan LeBatard
Could you feel the fear in the house? I grew up in a small exile family, and only in retro do I understand how parent. Well, I can't even understand it because I can't understand being a political exile. But only in retrospect do I understand that there was a great deal of fear in my childhood. And I could have felt it if I'd sort of been aware that that was not a normal thing to have around the house. Could you feel it in your house?
- [59:25]
Weird Al Yankovic
Fear?
- [59:26]
Dan LeBatard
Well, just the idea if they're always. If they're that protective, they're afraid of something happening to you. If you're the only child, you. You don't have siblings. There's some stuff happening there that is going to. That could carry into adulthood or carry into growth. It has, in my experience, it might not be in yours.
- [59:46]
Weird Al Yankovic
I remember my mom telling me once that she. When I was a young kid on the playground, she saw a woman approaching me and she said that she had a vision that this woman was growing devil horns and that she was going to do some harm to me. So she ran and picked me up and took me home immediately. So that had to be A manifestation of some kind of paranoia or fear. I mean, she was very concerned with people harming me in some way. So she basically, my entire childhood was her doing her best to protect me. And it was all well meaning and again, came from a place of pure love. But as a child, and especially as a teenager, it felt very restrictive and it was. I kind of had a lot of bitterness about it. And in fact, when I went up, I remember when I was going into my senior year in high school, I was 15 years old and she wouldn't let me go visit a friend's house or whatever. I asked her to do something that seemed quite harmless and she said no. Here was my big clapback. I said, oh, it's okay. Next year I'll be in college and I can do anything I want. And you can see the wheels turning around. Her head is like, oh, oh, no. Yeah, well, I mean, I better transition him a little bit into this.
- [61:06]
Dan LeBatard
But you're a good kid, right? Oh, you're saying to yourself, I'm valedictorian. Why can't I code bitter? Al's a totally different character than Weird Al. That would have gone. That would have gone much differently. But you found that. You look back on it and it's something that was religious. Like, was there a lot of like devil horns? Was there a lot of.
- [61:29]
Weird Al Yankovic
It was a religious upbringing? Yeah, we were a church going family and yeah, that was part of it.
- [61:33]
Dan LeBatard
And when do you sort of break free? You said you weren't rebellious, but you break free into, is it going to college so that I'm going to be something closer to my own man.
- [61:45]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah. So my senior year they loosened the reins a little bit just because they realized we better like not let them rebel in college. We'll just kind of of like gradually give him his freedom. But I remember when they. I had the old family car and they had an old Lincoln Continental or something like that, and they were going to follow me to college. It's like a four hour drive. And I thought, well, they don't need to follow me to college. But all right. And I just remember as soon as we hit the 101 freeway, I gunned it. I lost them on the freeway. So that was sort of like my final act of rebellion.
- [62:22]
Dan LeBatard
That is tremendous. You performed. I mean, I don't. You lost your parents on the same day, which I cannot even imagine what the shock of that was. But you performed shortly thereafter, right?
- [62:35]
Weird Al Yankovic
It was the same night. Yeah.
- [62:37]
Dan LeBatard
How.
- [62:38]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah, it was. It wouldn't have been my decision it was like. It was a lot of denial. You know, it was unfathomable and obviously the. The hardest moment in my life. And I just didn't want to let people down. And I didn't want people to even know about it because I didn't want people walking on eggshells around me. Because it's a comedy show. I didn't want to make people feel bad. And I had an army of people working for me, and people had made plans to come there. So even though I was falling apart emotionally, I thought, I gotta pull it together and do this show. And obviously, it wasn't easy. You know, I just. You know, I'm a real the show must go on kind of guy. And I spent the whole night just trying to pretend like, you know, I hadn't just suffered the worst horror of my life.
- [63:38]
Dan LeBatard
And how did you perform? Is there any recollection of anything from.
- [63:44]
Weird Al Yankovic
No, I mean, I just tried to get through the show. I mean, every now and then I'd sing a lyric referencing, like, my mother or whatever, and all of a sudden it would, like, snap back and, like, oh, no. And then reality would hit for a second. I had to, like, regain my composure and keep on with the show. But it was, you know, I guess I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing because I was able to, you know, do my show, pretend like I was okay, smile on stage, do comedy, and then go back to the bus and fall apart.
- [64:19]
Dan LeBatard
Is responsibility a burden for you? Have you always been responsible?
- [64:25]
Weird Al Yankovic
Pretty responsible. I mean, I like to think I'm a responsible guy and I do things on time and I do what I'm supposed to do.
- [64:33]
Dan LeBatard
I'm saying the idea of having to perform for others in that circumstance, the idea of having to take care of the economy of people around you.
- [64:42]
Weird Al Yankovic
I guess mostly I just don't want to disappoint people. I don't want to cause hardships for others. I mean, that's like, a big thing for me was like, you know, whatever you do, don't make things worse. And I figured if I canceled a bunch of shows, I mean, a lot of people would be upset. And a lot of people make their plans in life, and I didn't want to ruin, like, thousands of people's plans. I didn't want to take people's livelihoods away from them, the people that worked. So I just figured the best way to do it would be to just kind of trudge through and do the shows. What I did do is I canceled all my interviews. I canceled all the meet and greets, because I kind of didn't want to be around people. I just, you know, all I wanted to do was do what I was supposed to do and then. And then, you know, and then grieve privately.
- [65:29]
Dan LeBatard
And were you able to do that? Because I lost my brother a little over a year ago and we do a daily show. And there was something about. About the first six months of that, that. That feel like what it is that you're talking about, which is you're there, but you're not there. And you're there because you're sort of doing the muscle memory of it. And then later on, I'm still sort of parsing through all the things that I push down.
- [65:56]
Weird Al Yankovic
It's very much that. I mean, thankfully, this was like, well into the tour, so we weren't just kind of getting our sea legs. It was muscle memory because the show was established. We were used to doing it. And my body was on stage performing, whereas my mind was somewhere else. It was, you know, I felt like I was like levitating above the sky on stage, doing this comedy routine.
- [66:19]
Dan LeBatard
A weird space to be trying to do comedy. And like, those juxtapositions don't really, as I recall, not that I recall much from this time, but there wasn't. I didn't quite have jovial in me. It didn't exactly exist at that time. Time. He brings joy with him everywhere he goes. Joy and laughter. And the tour is 65 cities bigger.
- [66:42]
Weird Al Yankovic
And 75. Who's got.
- [66:43]
Dan LeBatard
Anyway, I've got 65 here.
- [66:45]
Weird Al Yankovic
You made it.
- [66:46]
Dan LeBatard
Did you add 10 tours?
- [66:47]
Weird Al Yankovic
Oh, you know what it probably is? 65 cities, 75 shows. That was it. You figured it out. Thank you.
- [66:52]
Dan LeBatard
I'm right again. Bigger and Weirder is the name of the tour and it's weird al.com tour.
- [66:59]
Weird Al Yankovic
Yeah.
- [67:00]
Dan LeBatard
Weird al.com. a pleasure to be around his weirdness at all times. Thank you, sir.
- [67:05]
Weird Al Yankovic
Thank you.
- [67:05]
Dan LeBatard
I just made him royalty, his weirdness.
- [67:19]
Unknown
Billy, would you rather have a game night or would you rather go to a party? Now, before you answer that question, there's going to be Miller Light at both.
- [67:25]
Weird Al Yankovic
Wow.
- [67:26]
Unknown
There's going to be Miller Light at both of them because I see you were playing Mario Kart. You're a Mario guy.
- [67:31]
Dan LeBatard
Guy.
- [67:31]
Unknown
I know you like playing video games with your switch. Like, I feel like you'd be more of the game night kind of guy.
- [67:36]
You know, this is like the classic debate. Great tastes are less filling.
- [67:40]
Right.
- [67:41]
Why choose one or the other when you can have both?
- [67:42]
When you can have both. Exactly right. And on top of that, we're celebrating 50 years of great taste. And less filling.
- [67:49]
All right, we got to do both.
- [67:50]
50 years of Miller light since 1975. The original light beer. And now's the perfect time to celebrate legendary stories with family, friends, and a great tasting light beer. Billy, you know what time it is? I just checked my watch funny enough. It's Miller time, baby.
- [68:04]
Weird Al Yankovic
I thought so.
- [68:05]
Unknown
It's Miller Time. Taste. You can depend on a great beer for people who love beer. Simple ingredients like malted barley for rich, balanced toffee note flavors and the iconic golden color. 96 calories. Just 3.2 grams of carbs per 12 ounces. How do they do that?
- [68:20]
Science.
- [68:21]
It's amazing, though. The original light beer since 1970. 75. And still iconic 50 years later. Miller Light great taste. 96 calories. Go to millerlight. Com beach to find delivery options near you, or you can pick up Miller Light pretty much anywhere that sells beer. It's Miller time, baby. Celebrate responsibly. Miller Brewing Co. Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces.